CNCF-CKS Exam Information and Outline
Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist
Syllabus Update Checked on: October 30, 2026
CNCF-CKS Exam Syllabus & Study Guide
Before you start practicing with our exam simulator, it is essential to understand the
official CNCF-CKS exam objectives. This course outline serves as your roadmap.
The information below reflects the 2026 syllabus defined by
CNCF.
Below are complete topics detail with latest syllabus and course outline, that will help you good knowledge about exam objectives and topics that you have to prepare. These contents are covered in questions and answers pool of exam.
- Exam Format
- Performance-based tasks in live clusters; 2 hours; requires active CKA
- Cluster Setup (15%)
- Network policies to restrict cluster access
- CIS benchmarks for Kubernetes components
- Ingress with TLS
- Protecting node metadata and endpoints
- Verifying platform binaries
- Cluster Hardening (15%)
- RBAC least privilege
- Service account security
- Restricting API server access
- Upgrading Kubernetes to avoid vulnerabilities
- System Hardening (10%)
- Minimize host OS footprint
- Least-privilege IAM
- Restrict external network access
- Kernel hardening: AppArmor, seccomp
- Minimize Microservice Vulnerabilities (20%)
- Pod Security Standards and admission
- Managing Kubernetes secrets
- Container runtime sandboxes (gVisor, Kata)
- Pod-to-pod encryption (mTLS, Cilium)
- Supply Chain Security (20%)
- Minimize base image footprint
- Image signing and SBOMs
- Securing the supply chain: registries and admission
- Static analysis of workloads and images (Trivy, kubesec)
- Monitoring, Logging and Runtime Security (20%)
- Behavioral analytics and threat detection (Falco)
- Container immutability
- Audit logs
- Investigating malicious activity